There’s not always a straight line to reaching the senior ranks of a green career. These days you might need to pick up a variety of skills along the way.

Just ask Andy Schonberger, the Director of Earth Rangers Centre for Sustainable Technology in Woodbridge, Ont. Going through high school, he knew he wanted to be an engineer, he says.

“But I was always raised with that green bug at home,” he explains. “We used to clean out and reuse plastic bags. We were raised to not waste things.”

When he studied engineering at McMaster, he wanted to shoot for an environmental career. But he found that the green collar jobs didn’t come so easily once he graduated. “I found that to get into green tech, I needed some business skills.”